


True Colours

by Umbralpilot



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Bioluminescence, Emotional Baggage, F/F, First Time, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, Hair-pulling, Interspecies, Non-Human Genitalia, Science Fiction, Sex Pollen, Space Opera, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 16:24:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16287914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umbralpilot/pseuds/Umbralpilot
Summary: With humanity in decline from galactic leadership, and the isolationist Algari species on the rise, Captain Juanita Ngawati of the Outer Reach Exploration Company gets OREC's first Algari officer assigned as her second in command.





	True Colours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spotonchecks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spotonchecks/gifts).



> This story draws a lot from the Humanity Fuck Yeah!/Humans are Space Orcs tropes, so some cursory familiarity may help. It's also my first time writing sex pollen so I hope that works. I haven't tagged it for dubcon because Reasons allow consent to be given in-story, but if you're really really not into this trope you may want to avoid anyway.
> 
> Gracious recipient, you mentioned you are into the trope, so I hope you enjoy this take! Thank you for the prompt, the detailed letter, and the general inspiration. It's been tremendous.

 

Everything would have been simpler, Juanita thought when it began, if only the Algari had been just a little less  _ perfect _ .

“Captain Ngawati.” Admiral Zheng had been pleasant, doubly so over the comm, when delivering the news. She usually was when news was bad, some counter-productive idea about morale. Juanita had to force down a suspicious eyebrow before the admiral had said more than those two words. "The staffing committee has finally found your new first officer.”

“Am I going to thank you for it?” She’d been Zheng’s friend for too long to not call her out on her nonsense, though with a smile.

Zheng hadn’t smile back. “I don’t know, Nita. You’ve heard of Irn Zranzi Izranzi, haven’t you?” And she’d left just enough of a beat there for Juanita to trip herself up by mouthing a swear word. “So are you thanking us?”

“You’re setting me up with the Algari!” No wonder the Company had sent Aisha Zheng to give her the news. Juanita – that is,  _ people _ knew better than to argue with Zheng. But it had been a dirty trick and hadn’t made Juanita the least bit more positively inclined, towards the Outer Reach Exploratory Company, Irn Zranzi Izranzi, or the whole Algari species.

“Are you out of good Urlhem officers? Tiiun and I were a calibrated machine. I’ll take one of those Mdayaplernesu Pidginers you’re training legions of even though they’ll go indie on me within the Sol-year. Damn, Aisha, or just a human! Why do I of all the captains in OREC have to teach the Algari all the tricks of Company command?”

Zheng had let her finish her little rant, that is, to carry herself into saying what she’d been thinking despite herself. “She’s just the one Algari.”

“She’s the  _ only _ Algari. That’s the issue. It’s not  _ joining _ us that they’re after, Aisha.”

“This is bordering on speciesist, Ngawati. ”

Juanita had thrown her hands wide, had watched the gesture reflected in the mirror-black of the ancient, slightly under-polished OREC emblem hanging behind Zheng’s padded office chair. “You know exactly what my opinion on the Algari is. They’re inevitable and it’s our fault. I’ll serve on their ships when we lose OREC and I’ll do it quietly. But you’re asking me to be shown up on my own bridge…!”

“I’m asking you to  _ make _ a bridge, Nita.” Zheng’s tone had shifted. She had leaned a little bit forward and tightened her brows in the way that wrote all the two decades she had on Juanita in the lines between her eyes. “The Algari  _ are _ inevitable. They  _ will _ take humanity’s place. If we want to be true to the legacy of humanity - of OREC - everything we’ve brought to the galaxy – we have to make sure it’s safe in their hands. That they’re as good at leading exploration, encouraging trade, inspiring  _ unity _ , as they are at everything else we humans do. I’m sending Izranzi to the most diversely crewed ship in the Company fleet and the captain who made it the beacon it is. Will you serve, or is that  _ outdated? _ ” And Juanita had flinched, physically flinched, to be spun about and battered with the word she’d become so prone to muttering under her own breath at others.

Every shipday of the ones that followed she had turned it in her head, that ring of urgency – trusting urgency – in her old mentor’s voice. Zheng’s hands pressed on dull metal of her desk. The ornamental, special-crafted solar system display next to them, which had stopped moving with Earth on the far side of Sol, and had never been repaired.

So she’d taken the Algari. And the Algari was everything she’d damn well known she would be.

 

***

“Buckle up,  _ Jeanne Baré _ , we’re getting in the thick of it!”

Almost before the high alert lights bathed the bridge in red, the crew were moving, swinging into a dance well-practiced on every one of OREC’s human-commanded deep exploration vessel. The ones used to slipping in and out of particle storms to take their measure for the merchanters to follow. On days like this more than any others, Juanita knew what humanity has brought to the galaxy.

“I really do wish,” Lieutenant Kinuth muttered from her navigation console, as she secured the displays over all four of her eyes, “I really do  _ wish _ you’d use any other idiom in those situations. I do not find it comforting to recall that you humans like to be  _ attached _ to your vehicles in times of extreme danger.”

“And here I thought you wished Captain’d skip the  _ thick of it _ part,” Commander Lami Tori, mandibles clicking and all limbs working furiously, remarked next to her. But this only sent a ripple of laughter through them all, across the bridge and in the face of the coalesing storm ahead.

Juanita held the armrests of her captain’s chair and grinned at the vacuum. 

She didn’t glance at Irn Zranzi Izranzi: ramrod-straight a step behind her, except for the slight forward tip of her head, the faint indrawn tilt of her brow over large eyes. Silence there, just as Juanita was growing used to month by month. That had taken a while. Tiiun had had a plethora of things to say especially for those moments.  _ As your first officer, it’s my duty to protest this reckless action. _ Or  _ Company policy favours methodical exploration over Seeing What Would Happen _ . Tiiun had had such a particular way of saying  _ Seeing What Would Happen _ . They sometimes used Juanita’s own voice for it, brought pitch perfect out of their complicated Urlhem voicebox. The rest of the crew, even the Humans, found it hysterical.

Izranzi was silent. The whorls of bioluminescence in her velvet black skin showed a radiant green of excitement. They made her eyes, where they encircled them, look like the centres of spiral galaxies. 

“Engines are holding steady at Stage Two burn,” Lami Tori noted cautiously. He turned his head at a two-hundred-and-seventy-degree arc, sweeping the bridge from Ensign Westfield – the kid white-knuckled but steady at his post – to Izranzi, then to Juanita. One maxilliped brushed over his eye in a show of unhurried thought. “We could power down and surf it from here. Company playbook.”

“Gravity waves look on the regular side,” said Kinuth, hopeful.

Juanita shrugged. “Do we have reason to think there’s anything outside the playbook in there?”

The crew lingered, instruments chattering for them. Juanita relaxed in her seat despite the beginning of a hum through the hull, quietly proud of them all. Their readiness. Their trust.  

“Actually, I’m seeing this weird dispersal pattern,” Westfield pitched in, entirely unasked for yet just as expected. Textbook newbie Human ensign on an OREC bridge. Juanita smiled. “You all remember the the  _ Ibn Batuta _ ’s report from this quadrant last Sol-year?”

“It was in the mission brief.” Kinuth adored her mission briefs. “They had to go deep.”

“So will we if we want to chase it up. It was a really weird pattern, though...”

“I have the corroboration from the  _ Freya Stark _ survey.” Lami Tori sent the chart to Juanita’s personal display. “Marked for followup at priority.” 

The crew shifted, a murmur of mixed feeling. They had a saying about that word.  _ Priority: Human for ‘amazing discovery’ or ‘ridiculous danger’. _ But that was why humans captained the deep explorers. Still smiling, Juanita opened her mouth. 

“In that case, you have orders,” Izranzi spoke, not even over her – just before her, with just an instant’s more ready drive. “Burn to stage four, Commander. Ensign Westfield, feed Lieutenant Kinuth your data for course correction.”

Juanita closed her mouth, hoping the click of her jaw wasn’t audible.

_ Damnit _ , she thought, without even bothering to pretend she wasn’t doing so directly at Admiral Zheng.  _ I said it, more human than humans! _

“Yes’m,” Kinuth and Lami Tori responded in unison, clipped, efficient. No talkback here. That was Izranzi too. She was the only one who hadn’t laugh when Lami Tori ribbed his nervous sister-officer. 

It should bother her, this distance, Juanita thought as the buzz of the engine ran electric up from the soles of her boots, the  _ Jeanne Baré _ shivering with the delight of the burn. It really should bother her most, after what Zheng had said about and putting Izranzi on the Company’s most diverse crew, about OREC and humanity’s legacy of exploration leadership… the arc of viewscreens around the bridge brightened in a cloudburst of nebular colour, particles blazing in and out of being, wisps of matter arching their way blue to red, and the engine heaved into its labours. Should, would, was. She’d made the  _ Jeanne Baré  _ what it was because she loved and was gifted at working with aliens. The Algari was… something else again. 

“Steady as she goes, Idash, Arjun” she instructed Kinuth and Westfield, using their personal names without pausing to think – except about how Izranzi never did, not once in her five long months of service. Didn’t have to tell Kinuth twice, of course, Kinuth was the soul of slightly terrified steady, the very creature for whom humanity had coined the assertion that true courage was in having fears yet acting despite them. As the ship’s thrum of strain turned into full-bodied tremors, Lami Tori wrapped his legs around the set of his console and wrapped his focus just as completely in the task of coaxing the engine, taking his eyes entirely off the starfield glory of the screens. Knots of lightnings popped and quickened and burst into roars of static around them. A report appeared on Juanita’s personal screen from the infirmary, written in Dr. Malsk’s unique combination of educated formality and Pidginer’s obscenity:  _ correspondence to report profound rue re: cross-species encounter led to conception/birth of undersigned on fucking arse-pustule spaceship always going into deadliest shitpits of cosmos _ . 

Izranzi’s green excitement climbed into the aquamarine in tandem with the thickening of light sheets pouring across the viewscreens. She rocked very slightly on her heels, a split-second of bringing herself closer to the view.

“How’s that course, Ensign?” she prodded Westfield. “Are we still seeing what the  _ Ibn Battuta _ had?”

Juanita swirled her chair halfway around to look. Westfield’s lips were pinched and the pinch tightened just slightly with every jolt and the crack of hot plasma strings across the hull. “I’ve got it. I’ve got the stream. I need to get closer.”

“Kinuth, breathe,” Juanita instructed automatically.

“Push her to stage five, captain?” Lami Tori queried in his breathless, speaking out of his airsacs voice. Izranzi also half-turned to catch Juanita’s eye.

“If we burn the right frequency at seven, we can plot a course dipping in and out of the stream matching the gravity wave patterns.”

“We can also just jettison the structural stabilizers,” Lami Tori said dryly.

“At five we can hold position relative to the storm’s approach.” Kinuth was swaying side by side with the ship she was guiding. She pulled violently sideways with the  _ Jeanne Baré _ ’s spin out of the way of a blast of cold cosmic white. “We can take it. For a while. I hope.”

Westfield shook his head, sweaty hair flying. “Stream’s not moving with the storm. Can’t guarantee a lock.”

“More than sixty seconds in burn seven will bash us all against the bulkheads.”

“Can you tweak the internal gravity to compensate?” Juanita heard Lami Tori’s mandibles creak together in the pinch that said  _ humans!  _ “How long?”

“ _ You’ll _ survive about fifteen minutes.  _ I _ can push eight if I use an exo-booster – “

Kinuth gasped out, “I can calibrate a tag probe if someone takes the helm– “

“Let me take a shuttle,” Izranzi said.

The only thing that broke the sudden silence on the bridge was another strike of cosmic lightning, jolting them all back into the moment. “You can’t run all the data alone – “ Lami Tori began.

Izranzi raised a hand. “I’ll run on pathfinding protocol. You’ll pipe me the track and modulate environmental compensation conditions from the  _ Jeanne Baré  _ so I can concentrate on flying, and guide me through the dipping course. I’ll go out at high burn and surf your gravitational waves for a boost – that should get me at the right speed without straining my engine.”

Westfield gaped through his frantic typing. “Can you even do that on pathfinding protocol?” He glanced at Juanita. They all did. 

_ We didn’t develop it for that _ . It was on the tip of her tongue. The other species on the Company board had called the protocol the crowning jewel of human scientific insanity, and Juanita knew even Pidginer captains who considered burn-surfing an exotic form of suicide.  _ We’d never have gotten approval to test that as a combination! _

Too creative? Too risky? On  _ her _ ship?

“All right, commander, we’re up.” Her own tone surprised her with its subtle glee. That sure as hell served Aisha Zheng right, if the first Human-Algari captain-XO combo in OREC wound up daring themselves into their explosive death together as an object lesson on the unacknowledged importance of responsible adult races. “Take Shuttle One. I’ll hook up with its systems as secondary nav. You have twenty-three minutes to probe the stream before I start seizing from sensory overload. After that we’re powering everything down and riding it out in a nice Stage Two, priority or not.” She reached back and pulled her hair into a knot to get it out of the way of the nav gear. “What’s the drill if I die, Lami?”

Lami Tori emptied every airsac in a sigh. “Make sure you’re the only one, but let everyone know it was worth it.” 

“Damn straight.” Juanita gave the knot a final twist. “I hereby entrust the  _ Jeanne Baré _ to you with Mother Earth’s blessings and apologies.  _ Ā tēnā, _ Izranzi,  _ vamos _ !” 

That was all the Algari needed, just as Juanita knew it would be. Not five minutes later the shuttle was off, Izranzi was in the storm, and Juanita was plugged in the interface that Kinuth’s people had never really built for humans, as Kinuth was still fond of reminding her every time she used it anyway.

It was indescribable every time. The way her awareness filled with brilliance and colour, the visual equivalent of earphones piping music to the centre of her head. The moment the interface switched control of her autonomous nerve functions down to the infirmary as it lay claim to all her brain’s processing power – that is, the moment her heart stopped. Then her body vanished from her own perception. Then all she had of the world was the sense of communication between the infirmary and the bridge, as Dr. Malsk kept count.

“Twenty two minutes, fifty four seconds until I can tell Captain in person she is fucking suicidal gloryhound.”

And the rest – the rest was space.

With the little conscious input the interface demanded, Juanita drew Izranzi and her shuttle towards the smell of dispersal trail, wincing away from the gravity disturbances that shivered along her skin. The interface did not make the vessel her new body, precisely, but translated input through the nerves and neurons she had to offer. The shuttle’s acceleration registered as an urgent hand on her back, grew thrilling claws as Izranzi pulled up in a stunning spin into the  _ Jeanne Baré _ ’s burn wake. With the crackling spice of radiation on her tongue, Juanita sought the safe borders of the dipping course. The shuttle’s responses felt even faster than her own reflexes. And decisive, the hand at the controls managing the edge of danger with relish.

Izranzi was a phenomenal pilot. Of course she was. Other races had better response times, but no one could balance instinct with daring the way they did – Algari and humans. Kinuth’s people endured the interface much better, but that was because it didn’t make them taste, feel, breathe outer space.

Izranzi was a phenomenal pilot. She moved the shuttle that was now all of Juanita’s senses and body with a grace so fine it almost hurt.

“Twelve minutes, thirty-one seconds.” Malsk’s voice was a slow-motion record scratch. “Captain stable at projected levels of horrifying burnout. Commander Izranzi – “ a pause, drawn-out. “Commander Izranzi stable at downright fine strapping condition. Never seen such readings from non-human subject.”

There it was. Juanita had no body and no teeth to grit. 

She needed to keep flying. Before horrifying burnout set in.

“ _ Jeanne Baré  _ bridge.” The sudden invasion of Izranzi’s voice gave Juanita a moment of nauseating dissociation. Why had Izranzi patched her into this extra sensory input?  _ Now? _ “I’m seeing the trail coalesce. Confirm.”

A beat – Lami Tori no doubt just as stunned – and then: “Confirmed, Shuttle One. Whatever it is, you’re nearing the source.”

“I’ve patched the captain in, infirmary, take into account. We’re there. I’m seeing – something.”

Juanita strained to adjust her focus. The scent of the particle trail encircled her, suddenly so sharp it was in the back of her mouth, down her throat, up behind her eyes. The interface too struggled to overlay the hundred colours of the translated spectrum onto a view that the human eye and human gut could contend with. But after a moment, Juanita saw.

_ It’s alive _ . The realization hit her the same instant it must have hit Izranzi. The shuttle, for all its speed, seemed to freeze with their combined awe.

“ _ Jeanne Baré  _ bridge,” Izranzi said softly. “We have eyes on a yottafauna specimen. Confirm. We have eyes on – “

“ _ A great glorious fucking space whale _ ,” Juanita breathed out of her own throat, before she had even realized that she was in control of her body again.

She was all to pieces, ears roaring, vision crossing, no doubt pulled out less than a minute before the inevitable seizure. Absolutely no regulation, never mind common sense, for her being restored to command in this state. But of course she understood. None of them were remotely equipped to decide their next course of action here. None of them, not even Izranzi. They didn’t, they needed not just a human, they needed their captain – 

She sank back in her chair, closed her eyes, coughed the smell of space out of her lungs. “Arjun. Storm status.”

“The great glo- the yottafauna is generating microgravity disturbances,” Westfield answered, halting. “We can hold course, but – I’m not sure how the shuttle is going to pull back.”

“I am not pulling back.” Izranzi’s voice was not one whit less steady. “This is the first yottafauna sighting by a Company ship in fifty Solbits. The scientific value is immeasurable. Our duty is clear.” 

_ Our _ . Briefly, dizzily, Juanita wondered if her first officer didn’t realize that she was still awake and functioning. 

Izranzi didn’t wait for confirmation of her duty, only demanded: “ _ Jeanne Baré  _ bridge, what can you do to buy me more time?”

And Izranzi  _ was _ the first officer, and not strictly wrong. The crew responded with attention if clearly not with relish. “It’s down to retrieval, Shuttle One,” Lami Tori determined at last, underscored by a series of sombre clicks. “We can retreat to the edges of the storm and stay indefinitely. But if you’re going to follow the, the specimen, we’ll almost definitely lose you in the interference.”

_ In which case the data’s lost anyway,  _ Juanita thought in her daze. He’d have said it to her under the same circumstances. She didn’t know why he didn’t say it to Izranzi. 

“Can you rig some beacons to leave in my wake?”

“If Kinuth had the attention to spare. But right now, I don’t see how.”

“What if we use the pathfinder, the way it’s meant to?” 

“That would only be plausible once the captain can give you second nav again. Twenty-four hours mandatory recovery. We can’t do this, Commander.”

“I’m not leaving,” Izranzi said in a deadpan. “I’m not leaving it.”

Something in Juanita’s sluggish mind stirred, or perhaps in her gut. She opened her eyes again, vaguely acknowledging that Dr. Malsk was besides her, about to take her in hand no doubt. They’d have been long gone out of the storm under Tiiun’s command. But Izranzi was  _ not leaving _ . “Not your right,” she mumbled. “Captain can risk herself for duty… if the crew is safe…  but  _ you’re mine _ .”

Total silence from the shuttle, for a long, long moment. Longer than they had to spare, with the ship still bucking about in the storm, the shuttle still drifting behind the whale, Juanita’s brain going to overloaded pieces. At least she knew her crew would obey. The reason humans could captain the explorers, the greatest unspoken agreement between a human captain and nonhuman crew. The silent law of all the Company.  _ I will lead you past your limits, yes, but never past mine. _

“Captain Ngawati, ma’am,” Izranzi said after a small eternity. “I have one last idea. Requesting permission to crash the shuttle onto the yottafauna’s surface, to serve as beacon for future tracking, and be extracted in a lifepod.” And, when after her own endless moment of waiting she got nothing over the comm but the sound of Juanita’s sighing breath, “please treat this request as though it came from a human officer.”

Juanita’s body was vanishing from her own nerve endings again. She had seconds to respond. And there was only one response.  _ Shown up on my own bridge. Damn it, Zheng, I knew it…  _ “Permission granted, Commander.”

She sank into oblivion with her mind dancing with curses and the memory of the surest pilot’s hand in the universe. _She’s_ _perfect, perfect, perfect._

 

***

 

“You wanted to see me, Captain?”

Juanita glanced up from screen to door and found herself squinting a little at the light behind the figure there. Normally by this point, two ship days after the fact, she would be over the headache caused by the nav interface. But she had turned her office’s lights down to make her visitor, nocturnal by evolution, more comfortable, and the contrast was intense.

Or perhaps the sight of Izranzi by itself was a reminder.

Irn Zranzi Izranzi, herself a bit of a sensory overload, though Juanita would never dream of breathing the thought to anyone. Showing no sign of her minor injuries, the black of her velveteen skin lit in a dozen shades of pearlescent violet – a colour of meditation and self-possession, a fetching combination with the navy blue of her Company uniform. A careful grace in her pose and in her limbs, just a touch longer than a human’s. Her face – oval, large tilted eyes ringed with three-layered lids, luminescence tracing out the lines of a lipless mouth and bare suggestion of a nasal bone – just on the fascinating side of eerie. Juanita renewed her equally unspoken certainty that human-Algari Pidginers were not far in the future. Perhaps the best fate humanity could hope for, after the inevitable…

Right. “Come in, Commander. Just a few updates.” She spoke casually, and Izranzi seemed to take her words in that spirit, entering the room to stand at calm attention once the door closed behind her. “My commendation for you has gone through. You should receive the announcement by tomorrow. I’m sure we can arrange for a ceremony if you’d enjoy it.” Five months and she still wasn’t sure anyone on the crew knew what Izranzi  _ enjoyed _ , other than running missions only a human normally would, and racking up commendations for them. “I also have personal messages of thanks to convey to you from a few scientific institutes, including the Earth Society for Cryptoxenozoology.” A little ripple of high emerald through Izranzi’s skin – no, that was pride, not humour.

“Thank you, ma’am. And for your consideration in allowing me to pursue the mission to its conclusion.” 

_ Well. You knew how to ask.  _ “You were right about our duty. Leading the way in research and understanding of the universe is one of OREC’s highest goals.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“At ease, Commander.” Juanita leaned back in her chair and watched her first officer of nearly half a Sol-year not switch to any sort of ease. _What am I missing?_ _I’ve figured out every other nonhuman in this crew._ She’d put learning, attention, passion into it: Lami Tori’s many limbed physical cues, Kinuth’s balance of her species’ frailty with her individual ambition, Malsk’s elaborate rituals of connection, and a dozen others. If only Izranzi could have been little _more_ alien…

“Zranzi – that’s the familiar form, isn’t it? The prefix indicates a classification of the collective name.” The first thing she always made sure to learn of her crewmates, their names and styles. When she learned it she also learned that  _ Zranzi _ meant  _ beautiful flying creature.  _

“Yes.” The violet glow deepened a shade. Self-possession. “It has to do with kinship structures. I prefer the full form.”

“A cultural or personal preference?”

“Personal. Ma’am.”

Juanita nodded. “Of course.” She had already known there was no other reason. “This is your third commendation in less than half a Sol-year on the  _ Jeanne Baré _ . I’m not sure how much longer I’ll have you before you move on to your own Company command.”

“I hope to have the honour.” Sudden and dazzling, a flash of passion-white. 

“It’s a when now, not an if.” But the light throwing all the Algari’s delicate features into relief had faded. Juanita tried not to search for it too openly. “You’re not interested in commanding an Algari merchanter.”

“No.” Quick and resolute. As always. “My planet’s fleets, trade or science, are no challenge to me. I outdo my peers there easily. As a statement of fact.”

A gorgeously arrogant fact, Juanita thought. Though Izranzi was probably ready to pull out the numbers to prove it. “And OREC is different?”

Izranzi affected a shrug, clearly a learned gesture, but not elaborated upon.

“It’s also largely acknowledged as fact that OREC is declining, Commander. Your planet’s fleets, trade and science, are outdoing us in every respect. Your flexibility, energy, passion for space…  humanity used to embody those things. But sometimes in the last decade, even before the Algari began to shoot past us, we’ve all begun to feel… outdated.” She glanced down at her screen – not the latest model. The cut of her uniform – slack at the sleeves. She remembered the defeated tone of the  _ Ibn Battuta _ ’s report that had led them into the particle storm after the whale. The little signs of weariness were everywhere. 

“I was aware of this when I joined,” Izranzi said plainly.

“Then you are also aware of a developing consensus that the Algari will take humanity’s place as galactic leaders.”

“I have no opinion on this question.”

_Diplomatic._ Juanita gave her half a smile. “It’s… not an easy idea to accept, but I can’t argue with it. So I try not to let it affect my judgement. I don’t know if I’ve been entirely successful. You are a model officer, but I’m – well, as it were I’m only human. So I want this to be clear between us, that I am striving to keep our relationship unaffected by the relationship between our peoples. I hope you’ll work with me on this – I know it might take work, on my end.”

“I’ve felt no need for adjustment in our relationship,” Izranzi replied, unmoving.

Juanita opened her mouth and closed it. 

_ What do I want her to say? _ There was no need for any of this. Izranzi was doing her duty admirably and more.  _ She doesn’t owe anything else, not to me nor anyone on the crew. _ No friendship on her ship, no common cause between human and alien, had ever been forced into being.  _ Humanity’s legacy of leadership, Aisha said _ . What did she want Izranzi to be?

_ Why are you really here, in my Company, on my ship? _

Hands on her desk, she leaned slowly back in her chair, away from that unchanging, unblinking violet light. “I worry that you are… wasting tremendous potential, here on some OREC surveyor.”

For a split-second, Izranzi’s face went dark. So quick, Juanita half thought one or the other of them had blinked, nothing more. Perhaps that was all it was. Only a reflex that, like in humans, no amount of stoicism could suppress.

“I am untroubled by my assignment.” Never in all her thirty-six Sol-years, Juanita thought, had she been so thoroughly damned with faint praise. Izranzi set her shoulders half a centimetre straighter, as though they’d ever lapsed. “May I be dismissed, if that is all, Captain?”

“Yes. Dismissed.” At least once she was out, a moment later, Juanita could bury her face in her hands and let out a sigh that drained her lungs entirely. There was no reason to continue the talk. Izranzi clearly wasn’t interested. She was excelling in her assignment, and the mission had been accomplished and the ship was running smoothly. Everything was perfectly fine, except for everything that wasn’t.

 

**

 

“ -ridge to Ngawati,  _ Jeanne Baré  _ bridge to Captain Ngawati! Juanita, please respond!”

The ground – floor – bulkhead ran with an odd tremor against Juanita’s cheek. She opened gummy eyes and fought to shift her head, heavy as a neutron star. Blackness – no, not darkness, just a large patch of black in her view. Not a patch. Izranzi. The back of Izranzi’s head, where her first officer lay close by, herself shifting awake just as reality was starting to filter back into Juanita’s bruised consciousness.

“Captain, can you hear – “

“I hear you, Lami.” Her voice sounded as dry as her throat felt. She hauled herself up to her side. Around her the ship – the unlisted merchanter, grounded and abandoned planetside – hummed with power – they’d restored power – and the light was faintly smoky with a coat of fine dust – some secure compartment in the captain’s cabin had popped with the surge – “How are our vitals?”

And the mist that burst out must have knocked them unconscious. Yes, it was all back now. A booby trap? A weapon? An unlisted could be anything. 

Lami Tori gave an intense rattle, a sound of relief that from any other creature would have made her jump. Izranzi did jump, though she used the momentum to drive herself to her feet, of course she did. “Strong. They’re fine, now, but Captain, what  _ happened? _ We read you as sedated for almost an hour, you’ve missed your atmospheric exit window.”

_ Missed.  _ The bottom dropped out of Juanita’s stomach. That meant overnight on the planet, fifteen hours while scouring winds howled outside. After exposure to an unknown agent, with nothing but the medical facilities on their transport shuttle. She opened her mouth to swear. 

A blast of intense amber flashed at the corner of her eye. Izranzi. Izranzi’s radiant, beautiful version of  _ oh, shit. _

“We need to get to the shuttle,” the Algari said quickly, flatly. She turned to offer Juanita a hand up, a quick, flat gesture itself. Juanita grabbed the hand without thinking, too concerned with her report to her chief of ops.

“We were exposed to an unknown substance in the merchanter’s captain’s cabin. Keep monitoring us.” Only when she stopped speaking did she realize she was still half clasping Izranzi’s hand while the other woman listened. On touch, the seemingly velveteen texture of that stunning black skin turned out to be like very fine sandpaper, or thick suede, more tickling that abrasive. Izranzi pulled her hand back.  _ Maybe she wasn’t sure I’d be able to stay standing. _ “We’ll try to access ship data for any clues.”

“We need to head back,” Izranzi said again. Her whorls were rippling and shifting, angry topaz to pallid tan alarm, waves of very pale violet running along the edges of her face as she tried to reassert her calm. “This vessel won’t adequately protect us. I’m certain that’s why the crew left.”

Juanita hesitated. “If this was any kind of poison or bioagent –“

“Regardless, at the shuttle we have a chance. If we stay here we have none, even with an antidote.”

That was logical enough, but Juanita held. Her first officer’s eyes were wide, colours coming hard and fast. Scared.  _ You volunteered to crash-land on a space whale less than two weeks ago. For science. _

_ Why can’t I –  _

“Your orders, Captain.” Lami Tori’s voice on the comm cracked with tension. This was absolutely no time for frustration over how she couldn’t understand Irn Zranzi Izranzi.

“I’m taking Commander Izranzi’s view.” Juanita swallowed. Her thoughts were still coming a little jumbled, and her mouth was dry. “We’ll pipe you the feed from the shuttle medkit. See what you can do for us.”

“Copy that.” He sounded no more relieved than Juanita felt. Moments later, when they were out of the merchanter’s airlock and struggling across the salt plain to their shuttle, already fighting the first of the nighttime gales, she felt the opposite of relief squirrel further up her spine and down her guts with every step. Her skin felt hot inside her thermal suit, like the start of a fever. A rising sensitivity at the tips of her fingers, at her lips. She kept glancing at Izranzi, unable to decipher her colour as she huddled and pulled her hood down.

By the time they were standing together in the tiny space of the shuttle’s half-medbay, Juanita’s whole body felt tingling with heat. She tore off the parka of her suit and unzipped it halfway down her breastbone before her brain quite registered the movement of her hands. Then she stopped. Froze.

Izranzi leaned against the examination bed. She had pulled back her hood but had not removed anything else. She was glowing a colour Juanita had never seen before, a delicate scarlet. It made Juanita think of the flush of a new rose, or of pale human skin, touched…

Oh, no.

“Commander?” Juanita said quietly. 

The Algari started. She pushed herself off and began scrambling through her suit for something, patting down pockets. Juanita pulled a medkit from its wall slot and began a checklist of scanners. Malsk would have installed the calibrations for Algari in every kit in the  _ Jeanne Baré _ ’s store…

“I have it,” Izranzi said, a touch breathless, just as Juanita turned to her with the scanner. What she had was something that Juanita just about recognised as a personal medical scanner. “I grabbed it at the merchanter’s captain cabin.”

Juanita stopped, blinked. “That’s a very unusual design.”

Izranzi was silent for a beat.

“Yes,” she said at last. “It’s Algari make.”

Algari. Was the ship Algari? Juanita looked over the device in Izranzi’s hands, and then only at Izranzi’s hands, briefly hypnotized. It was getting hard to think. There was an obscure ache low in her stomach, and her blood felt like it was thrumming under the delicate skin at her throat, inside her elbows, in her inner thighs. 

She said: “Well  _ done _ , Izranzi.” Or perhaps  _ said _ was the wrong word. She breathed it out, the tip of her tongue pressing past her lips with the name.

Izranzi stiffened all over, though not as much as Juanita felt her own body do.  _ Oh, no _ . When it had just been the fever, the subtle heightening of her senses, she could tell herself that she was being paranoid. There had only been a handful of recorded cases of this sort in OREC history, after all. But then… so it had been with the yottafauna.

“Captain,” Izranzi said, and Juanita was certain of it – her voice was husky, her hand clenching hard around her little device, until she deliberately stuck it away on a shelf. Her scarlet radiance darkened a shade with the word.

It was unacceptable.  _ Not this, not her. Not the one I actually  _ **_want_ ** _ –  _

Izranzi opened her mouth, but only licked its edges, took a breath. She took a step back in the stiflingly small space, the only step she had. 

Juanita took a firmer step, back out into the main area of the shuttle. Just as deliberately, she out away her own medical scanner. No more use. They both knew. “Commander,” she said, in the voice she had trained to reach any member of her crew when she took them past their limits.  _ Past your limits, but never past mine.  _ “I suspect that we both understand what is happening to us. OREC has appropriate protocols. You will have studied them.” She would have, Izranzi the model officer.  _ Perfect _ . “I am invoking them now.”

Izranzi made a small, crumpling voice, but Juanita continued, “as your – human – superior officer, I release consent. You have the legal and ethical right to do whatever is necessary to avoid physical or mental harm to yourself, whether that means preventing my actions, or – pursuing your own.” Speaking the words sent a spike of sensation through the core of her body. She barely finished: “at your sole discretion.”

She would have given anything to close her eyes then, not to see the helpless, naked struggle on Izranzi’s face. What could only be a battle between her crippling need and her true feelings – or her lack thereof, the terrible abyss between it and Juanita’s swirl of admiration, envy, total disarmament. She would have given more for Izranzi not to see her own desire, to close herself off and act entirely on protocol. Not to wonder what this might have been like without the chemical meddling, if she and Izranzi might have, if it had been true…

Izranzi leaned forward and kissed her.

Juanita’s breath went out of her in a gale of sweet torment. The Algari’s mouth was fiercely hot, the whorls of colour around her thin lips so tender that Juanita almost feared to respond lest she hurt her. The kiss pressing, inexpert. Algari didn’t kiss among themselves. Izranzi reached up, sank her hands into Juanita’s hair, pulled her closer, deeper in. Kissed her, with a breath longer than a human’s, until she was dizzy, until her cunt was filled with a mad pulse. 

Her head fell back when Izranzi let her go, and her hands half trembled, giddy, as Izranzi took them and placed them on the sides of her body, urged Juanita to brush her fingers up her ribcage, to cup and massage her small breasts. Her body was all slender muscle, all tight, her height making Juanita reach up like a supplicant. She slid her arms under Juanita’s and pressed on her back, pulled their lower bodies together until Juanita moaned. Oh, but it felt true, and she couldn’t let that be. She couldn’t…

“I can’t.” Izranzi’s voice. Sudden, soft, stabbing. “I can’t do this, I can’t – “

The embrace turned into a push. Juanita stumbled back in a shock of sudden cold. It took her a moment to think free of it, of the swirl of blood low in her belly. She pulled feebly at her hair where Izranzi had pulled it loose from her ponytail. “I – what – ?”

Izranzi pulled her long arms around herself. She radiated red arousal shot through with deadened grey shame. “I can’t keep doing this.”

“No – no, Izranzi, it’s fine, if you need to, I gave consent – “ 

“No,” Izranzi echoed, almost whimpered. “It’s me. It’s me. I can’t keep lying. Look – look at the data, you need to understand before we – you have to understand what’s happening to us.”

She grabbed for the scanner and shoved it at Juanita, holding it by thumb and forefinger, her head turned away. Juanita squinted at the little screen. It was torture, trying to focus on it through the sight of the soft, scarlet pads of Izranzi’s fingers, the lingering taste of the Algari’s mouth in hers, ship’s air and something like sweet and smoky like cinnamon. She had to read the first couple of sentences three times before they made any kind of sense. 

After was – not easier, but certainly the shivering desire all through her felt like a crack had run through it. She looked back up at Izranzi, half huddled back into the enclosure of the medbay, even before she was done.

“This is – normal?”

“For Algari,” Izranzi answered, hushed. “It’s a form of symbiosis. We need the pollen to trigger the sexual reproduction cycle. The knockout was just a standard security mean, I believe.”

“And you knew? When did you know?”

“As soon as we woke up. ”

Juanita shook her head until the last of her hair was loose. She barely knew how she felt – relieved? Betrayed? “So why didn’t you – were you fighting the effects? Or is there some taboo? Or – “

“Yes – no – there is, but that’s not the point. It’s –“ Izranzi’s ever-sure voice faltered. A shudder of cascading colours ran across her, still utterly hypnotizing. “It’s a catalyst. Not a compulsion. It only works – that is, it only creates the urge – if the want is already there. On both parties’ end. The effect requires… extant mutual attraction.”

“Oh,” Juanita said dumbly. Then: “ _ Oh,  _ Izranzi _.” _

The Algari was still breathing slowly, one draw of air after another, ripples of radiance running across her with it, in more colours, more elaborate patterns than Juanita could follow. She focused on Izranzi’s face instead. The large inky eyes were glistening, fixed on some point beyond Juanita’s shoulder, until abruptly Izranzi turned her face, and their gazes met and locked.

“Captain,” Izranzi whispered. “Juanita. I want this. I want to forget it later, but for now… I want to be able to want you.”

She stepped in again, leaned in, slowly this time. Almost reverent, she put a hand to Juanita’s shoulder, brushed her fingers through the thick fall of Juanita’s hair. By inches, each inch a tiny bolt of lightning up Juanita’s neck, she curled herself against her captain’s chest. Their breathing came together, rasping with arousal. Juanita stayed still, until she couldn’t.

She put her hand to the nape of Izranzi’s neck, under the brush of stiff black hair that crested up from the Algari’s tapered skull, and tilted her face up for a second kiss. Gentle now, relishing. Izranzi moaned into her mouth as Juanita tweaked her nipples through the thermal suit, squirmed inside the constricting fabric. They moved back in slow, careful tandem until Juanita’s back met the bulkhead. The light impact made Izranzi stop, her hands fumbling between them. Her rosy glow fluttered with an undertone of grayish embarrassment.    

Juanita stopped, recognizing the look. “You’ve never been with another species.”

“I don’t know how – what is good for – “ 

“Let me show you.”

In one smooth move, she put her arms about Izranzi and spun them both. The Algari gasped when her own back touched the bulkhead, half a stunned sound of helpless desire at Juanita’s quick hands pulled off her parka, unzipped the suit, let her breasts free. Juanita’s breath caught at the landscape of colours revealed, the luminescent swirls and spirals, the glory that was the simple fact of Iranzi half-undressed before her. Straining up to match the Algari’s height she began to run her tongue along those curling lines of colour from Izranzi’s throat, tasting more of that biting cinnamon flavour of Izranzi’s mouth, the taste of Izranzi’s pitched arousal. She traced her way down to breastbone then to breast, found the nub of the nipple – larger than a human’s, shot through with tiny threads of light – and caught it in her teeth. Gentle, fleeting, but Izranzi’s spine arched and her mouth opened in a silent scream.

The light that poured off her was nearly blinding now, up so close. The rhythmic work of Juanita’s mouth set her hands spasming, scrambling up and down Juanita’s back, grabbing at her hair in an increasingly desperate tug that made Juanita’s cunt practically convulse. If she was with any person more experienced with a human partner, she would have demanded those long, strong fingers inside her right now, this instant. But this was Izranzi and this was true, true after all. She put her arms under Izranzi’s, pulled her away and steered her to the pilot’s chair, where she could sit her down and kneel before her, ease her legs apart. Izranzi draped herself back, closed her eyes as Juanita pried the suit zipper further and further down. On her lower stomach the texture of her skin thickened to something like silken fur, finer and softer though more abundant than human pubic hair. Juanita slipped her fingers further downward, paused to explore this new world.

“Please,” Izranzi whimpered, fingers sinking hard into the armrests of the pilot’s chair. “Captain, Juanita, please,  _ please _ .”

She was soaking wet; that was Juanita’s first impression, before her fingers told her the full, marvellous story. One slit, much like a human cunt except smaller, but then another, and another. Three in all, lined vertically, like pearls on a string, each perfect for a human finger. All moving, flaring and relaxing, as though to pull her in, a sweet rhythm in time with Izranzi’s breath. It made her desire feel stunningly urgent, thrumming with a life of its own. 

Juanita couldn’t have kept her waiting for all the ships in the Company. As soon as her fingers slipped in she felt the flow overtake them, deep and delicious, felt the bucking of Izranzi’s hips join the pulsing of her cunts. Felt the fever pitch of her own arousal climb up and up, until she was herself half rocking in place, her free hand going between her own legs, rubbing hard circles through the fabric of her thermal suit. Izranzi breathed in great rushes, sucking in and hissing out air, utterly undone – as undone as Juanita has been in her presence from the start. She arched back, then fell forward, wrapped her arms and legs around Juanita, and crushed her into her as she climaxed, one ferocious burst that filled the shuttle with light. 

Juanita’s orgasm exploded through her a moment later, like a fall from a great height, giddy, breathless. In Izranzi’s grip, she shuddered once, and again, and again. Her pleasure crested and fell, and with every fall she felt the rhythmic pulsing of Izranzi’s cunts around her fingers and against her hand, her breathing all around her, pulling her back up the wave. It was a feeling to drown in. She rode and rode it, consumed, not knowing for how long.

She regained awareness of herself like surfacing from a dream. Izranzi lay bonelessly in the chair, faded to palest blue contentment. Everything in the shuttle smelled of heady sweat and cinnamon. The compulsion was gone. 

And then full reason returned. For a painful moment she remembered that up on the  _ Jeanne Baré, _ their lifesigns – and all they implied – were still being monitored, but then thought that the silence on her comm meant Malsk had likely understood and given them their privacy. Then she thought of the crew, and the report she’d have to file, and pushed herself to sit upright with a long groan.

Izranzi must have understood because, eyes still closed, she murmured, “please don’t report this.”

“You know I have to.” Her stomach clenched, unpleasant above her still sensitive crotch.

“I know the protocol. I can invoke medical confidentiality. This incident can go no further than the  _ Jeanne Baré _ infirmary’s sealed records.”

Trust Izranzi to know her OREC rules to the letter. Juanita swallowed and nodded. Forget later it was, then. “I understand why you feel – “

“You don’t understand anything.”

If she had not said that, if she had just let Juanita finish the ritual of captain and officer, had not stabbed at the stars-damned  _ truth  _ so exactly, it could’ve ended there. But this was more than Juanita could take. More than any reasonable person,  _ human _ , could take, she thought as she pushed herself up to her feet. She moved into Izranzi’s space as the Algari gathered herself up in her seat, straightened against the back of the chair. She was good at sealing her face, certainly, that perfect officer. But her colours were all in mixing waves, washes of spiralling emotion. Juanita bared her teeth at them.

“Damnit, Izranzi, then for once you could explain!”

“I don’t see why I should,” Izranzi spoke coldly. “You never wanted me on your ship.”

“I tried again and again to improve our relationship – “

“You tried to salve your conscience.”

“If you’d given me as much as a hint about how to reach you – ”

“I did not want to be reached!”

“It’s  _ you _ who never wanted to be on my ship!“

“I  _ begged _ to be on your ship!” Izranzi shouted.

Juanita started, stumbled back on a heel. She flashed back to her talk with Admiral Zheng, months ago.  _ Begged  _ to be – “what are you talking about?”

Anyone else she has ever known, human or otherwise, would have looked away, she thought. Izranzi glared right at her. “The staffing committee told me they had concerns, but this was all I wanted. The  _ Jeanne Baré _ . The most diverse ship in the Company, under the captain most famous for her accomplishments with a multi-species crew. I wanted to see you. Serve with you. And you were everything they said you were. You’re  _ perfect _ .” She drew the word in in a tiny sigh.

Juanita felt her face burn, thanked all the ancestors that had given her a colour that didn’t show it. “And you thought I didn’t want you.”

“You  _ didn’t  _ want me,” Izranzi answered wryly. “But it’s quite all right. I understand.”

“No, no, that is just what  _ you _ don’t understand. It’s not you.” Juanita breathed in. She dragged a palm down her face, then dragged the second chair to where she could slump into it, facing Izranzi, hands between her knees. She couldn’t do it anymore either. She couldn’t keep lying.

“The Company is – everything.” She drew the words out of herself, somehow. “When the Company was founded, there was a Ngawati on the board. When we went from merchanters to explorers, a Ngawati was drafting the new charter. And before that. My great-grandmother was the first woman outside the solar system. My father’s family studied a tradition that had navigated Earth’s greatest oceans. All those glorious things humanity has done…” she wrung her fingers together until it hurt. “I don’t resent the Algari for taking our place. I resent us for… not measuring up to what we used to be.”

She looked up, not quite sure when she had dropped her gaze. Izranzi was looking at her oddly. “There’s more to it,” her first officer said, tone not too hard, but flat.

“I don’t – “

“Be honest with me, Captain.” And then, with an uncertain look, with a bob of her throat: “Juanita.”

The sound of her name jarred her. It seems to turn under her breastbone, like the turning of a key. She slumped forward, and for the first time, heard the winds of the cruel planetside night wheezing outside. 

“You’re so human,” she said quietly. “You can do everything I can do, mostly better. You don’t need me for anything my crew needs me for. I don’t know what I can be for you.” She exhaled. “I’m just not so good with humans.”

Izranzi blinked all three eyelids.

“And you have feelings for me,” she said, halting.

“I’ve made that very clear, I think.”

“Despite this difficulty I present?”

Juanita chuckled under the hand rubbing her brow. “Maybe that’s one human thing you still need to catch up on.”

“I – “ Izranzi was very still, flickering colours doing her fidgeting for her. Silvery-blanched uncertainty, flecked with threads of scarlet-rose. An Algari blush, Juanita thought, a little shiver running down her back and up her stomach.

“And you have the same for me,” she said, just as quiet. “Even though I put you so badly off.”

Izranzi snorted, a sudden hard sound – a practiced, human sound of bitterness. A flash of murky yellow chased the silver and scarlet off. “I was relieved when you did.”

“What?  _ Why? _ ”

“It was better. It was a barrier. I needed barriers. I didn’t want to do what Algari do. I hadn’t come to OREC to do what Algari do.”

Her tone was growing quick and clipped and angry. The light of her whorls seemed to pool in her legs and push them to twitch as she clearly ached to rise. Juanita had to stop herself reaching out to put a hand on her knee. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s not your - “

“Stop lying.”

“ _ Pack bonding _ ,” Izranzi spat with a bitterness as black as space. “I’ve heard that humans are known for it, but my species makes yours look downright standoffish. Do you know how hard it is for me to hold myself back from imprinting my flora on all of you? Professional distance is not a concept in my culture!”

It was shocking enough an answer to throw Juanita even off the magnificent thought of being  _ imprinted with Izranzi’s flora _ . “But why hold back? Humans don’t. It’s been vital to our role in the Company, the galaxy…”

“Because that is not what I came here for! I left my planet, my shoal, everything, to show what a lone Algari is capable of. That we can endure and  _ thrive _ on our own. I joined your crew to make  _ history _ , not  _ friends _ !” All her markings and whorls were ablaze with the depths of her frustration, mauve and furious amber. Despite herself, the display took Juanita’s breath away. 

Izranzi saw as much, she realized. It made the Algari waver, pulling her long limb close about herself. She made one of her little sounds, which Juanita didn’t know if to read as frustration or dark laughter. “I’m ridiculous. I realize. Beg to work on a diverse ship and then close myself off to all those I came to learn how to work with.”

“You’re perfect,” Juanita said bluntly.

She stopped fighting the urge to lean forward and touch Izranzi again. Now it was wholly hers, free of induced desire, ensconcing a clearer truth within it. She put her hand on Izranzi in her first officer’s lap and felt the heat of that suede-like skin, soft and rough all at once, warmer than a human’s. Izranzi didn’t move, but her colours settled. The ripples of bioluminescence flocked to the hand, gathered around the touch, rosy and tiny and eager like living things crowding at the watering hole.

“Zranzi – “

“Juanita – “

“I was wrong – “

“I was wrong – “

“I’m so used to being one thing, as a captain and a person, that when it wasn’t enough – “

“ – so used to thinking I knew what I had to be to work with you – “

“ – stopped listening – “

“ – never tried to listen – “

“- would you let me finish, you damn upstaging Algari?”

Izranzi burst out laughing.

The sound was affected. Learned. Human. But a dance of lights came with it, different from any that Juanita had ever seen her show. Not a new shade, nor the rapid swash of conflicting emotion. Instead the whorls lit then faded in turn, quick, flickering, one then another, random shimmers across Izranzi’s body. Twinkling stars against a velvet night sky.

“We have… a lot to discuss,” she said. 

“I should say. Several months’ worth.” Juanita hesitated. Her hand was still by Izranzi’s own, and as she sneaked a glance down, she saw Izranzi’s fingers shift, felt them entwine through hers. Slow, inching, but sure once they settled.  _ Bonding _ . What both humans and Algari did best. “Good thing we have all night.”

Izranzi’s thumb slid across her palm, just the hint of a nail pressing in. Juanita caught her breath. 

“We’ll have much longer when we return to the  _ Jeanne Baré  _ and everyday duties _ , _ ” Izranzi murmured. “Perhaps tonight we are in no hurry.”

No indeed, Juanita thought as she followed that rosy light, reflecting in the deep dark of Izranzi’s eyes, flowing down her face, her neck, her body. Tonight, they were not.

 

**

 

“How did it go with Admiral Zheng?” Juanita asked, trying not to shift too visibly on the bed as Izranzi dropped her bag at the foot of it. She got up to follow her wearily dim, but contentment-blue first officer as Izranzi went into the cabin’s little kitchenette to dig out one of the inexplicable Algari fizzy teas she was always leaving in the the stasis unit.

Izranzi grinned as Juanita claimed the first sip of the tea and made the expected appalled face, then flashed a pattern of cascading uncertainty. “She was pleased with my performance on the  _ Jeanne Baré _ , but I think I may have confused her. With my socializing.”

“Was it a very confusing kind of socializing?”

“Arjun challenged me to see which of us had better endurance for alien psychoactive drinks. Lami Tori and Kinuth placed bets. The admiral – “ she scampered back at Juanita nearly spat out a mouthful of fizz.

“Who won?!”

“The ensign.” Izranzi sounded regretful. “A point for humanity. Add it to the tally.”

“And Aisha watched?”

“I don’t think she was quite expecting it of me.” She claimed back the tea and returned to settle on the bed, long legs crossed once at knee and once at ankle, Juanita sat next to her and rubbed a hand along her back, now able to find the Algari’s tension points almost without thinking. Izranzi hummed a human sound of gratitude as she stared, thoughtful, into her drink.

“The admiral commended me, and asked me to commend you, on the bridge-building efforts we have been making between our two species,” she said at length, turning that look at Juanita. “Perhaps we have been, but…”

“That isn’t how you’ve been thinking about it?” Juanita smiled slightly.

“Have you?”

“Of course not – but maybe that’s why it’s working.” 

Izranzi made another sound, one of her native unreadable ones now. Even in the two months since their night stranded together, Juanita had yet to unlock those. She relished how much more there was to be learned. “Is it working? I am still the only Algari in OREC. It’s frustrating. We’re still afraid.”

“Of being alone apart from other Algari. You’ve said.” It had been so easy to understand, after all. “Change takes time. It did for us humans.” “And in the meantime?”

“In the meantime, I think we’re doing the very best thing to show them there is nothing to fear.” She slipped her fingers up Izranzi’s spine, cradled the nape of her neck, leaned closer to press her lips to her clavicle. “Bonding.”

Stars twinkled under her touch where she pulled Izranzi’s collar back. The Algari sighed human pleasure. She half turned to briefly brush the delicate whorls about her mouth to Juanita’s throat. “And what do we show your people? Your Company?”

“Our Company,” Juanita corrected. She thought back to Aisha Zheng’s talk of a bridge, the legacy of OREC and humanity. Everything that they hoped the Algari could do for the galaxy as well as humanity has – what they already could, and what they could learn to.  _ Exploration, trade… unity. _

“I think we’re showing them exactly the same,” she concluded, and pulled Izranzi down onto the bed. The tea she put away on the desk, where the OREC insignia, cleaned and freshly re-enamelled, glittered in many colours. 

 

 


End file.
